‘What am I supposed to do?’ customer asks as Rite Aid closes 2nd Miami Valley location

HARRISON TWP. — Another week, another Rite Aid in the Miami Valley is closing.

>> RELATED: Rite Aid confirms its store and pharmacy in Harrison Twp. will be closed

This time, it’s the location at 4328 N. Main St. in Harrison Twp., a spokesperson for the drugstore company confirmed with News Center 7 on Thursday. Its last day of business will be June 19. The pharmacy is to close May 8.

“What am I supposed to do?” Marty Smith of Harrison Twp. asked News Center 7′s Malik Patterson rhetorically.

Smith said she was given an option of two other pharmacies in the area.

“They sent me to Walgreens, but I said ‘does Walgreens take my medical [insurance]?’ ” she asked. “They said, ‘we don’t know.’ What do you mean you don’t know?”

The announcement comes nearly a week after News Center 7 reported that the Rite Aid on 3875 Salem Ave., also in Harrison Twp., will close June 16. Its pharmacy will close May 13.

Rite Aid released the following statement:

“Rite Aid regularly assesses its retail footprint to ensure we are operating efficiently while meeting the needs of our customers, communities, associates and overall business. In connection with the court-supervised process, we notified the Court of certain underperforming stores we are closing to further reduce rent expense and strengthen overall financial performance. At this time, we have not made or confirmed any decisions on additional specific store closures as part of our financial restructuring process.”

Customers who live in the area of the two outgoing Rite Aid stores said they just want to know what they are supposed to do now.

“I’m hoping they put another pharmacy right here,” April Kiptanui of Harrison Twp. said of the North Main Street location. “Because it’s [the pharmacy] nowhere else.”

The Rite Aid closing is among the latest wave of companies throughout the United States that have announced store and pharmacy closings, Walgreens and CVS among them.

>> RELATED: Walgreens to close Dayton west side location, triggering fear of pharmacy desert

In early March, The Walgreens on Hoover Avenue in Dayton joined the locations across the nation to be shuttered because of corporate downsizing, a decision that continues to draw attention to concerns that low-income, Black and Latino Americans have been abandoned and left to exist in a pharmacy desert.

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